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Raja Shehadeh studied law in London. His grandfather, Saleem, was a judge in the courts of the British Mandate of Palestine. His great-great-uncle, the journalist Najib Nassar, founded the Haifa-based newspaper Al-Karmil in the last years of the Ottoman Empire, before World War I. His father, Aziz, also a lawyer, was one of the first Palestinians to publicly support a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.[2] Shehadeh is from a Palestinian Christian family.[3] Adam Shatz has cited Shehadeh as one of two people who have provided a formative influence of his understanding of the Middle East conflict, writing that 'Anguished and somewhat fragile, he is a man who, in spite of his understandable bitterness, has continued to dream of a future beyond the occupation, a kind of neo-Ottoman federation where Arabs and Jews would live as equals.'[4]

Shehadeh is a founder of the human rights organization Al-Haq,[2] an affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists. He has written several books on international law, human rights and the Middle East. Strangers in the House was described by The Economist as "distinctive and truly impressive".[5] In 2008, he won the Orwell Prize, Britain's pre-eminent award for political writing, for his book Palestinian Walks.[6] Shehadeh was critical of the Palestinian National Authority for having imported on its return the prejudices of the Palestinian diaspora. He himself resigned his work as an advisor in dissent from the PLO during the Madrid peace negotiations, and considers the continuing hostility of the Palestinian diaspora for failing to come to terms with the realities of Palestinians who have endured the occupation for decades, and who have built their civic institutions while exercising the traditional values of sumud rather than indulging in impractical cults of heroism.[7][8]